Test 3 Readings

Question 1

scripts

Answer 1

In adults, infants memory tends to be organised into schemas or scripts, for routine events. Each script is a generic or abstract knowledge structure that represents the temporal and causal sequences of events in very specific contexts.

Younger infants tend to blend their memory of novel events into their script but older infants are able to keep them seperate.

This tendency may rely on the saliency of the novel event on whether or not it is deemed atypical by the child and kept seperate.

Question 2

Parental Interaction Style and the Development of Episodic Memories

Parents tend to ask young children fairly specific questions about shared past events, such as “Where did we go yesterday?”,“Who did we see?” and “Who was there with us?” (Hudson, 1990). Repeated experience of such questions may help young children to organise events into the correct temporal and causal order, and to learn which aspects of events are the most important to recall. Parents who ask more of these specific questions have children with better memories.

Two types of parent-interaction styles:

Answer 2

o Eleaborative:
 Mothers consistently elaborated on the
information that their child recalled and
then evaluated it.
 Questions like “Where were our seats?”
and “What was the stage set up like?”

o Non-Elaborative:
 Mothers tended to switch topics and to
provide less narrative structure, and
seldom used elaboration and evaluation.
 Asked the same question repeatedly
“What kinds of animals did you see? And
what else? And what else?.”
• Children of the elaborative mothers tended
to remember more material at 58 and 70
months. Reese et al. suggested that
maternal elaborativeness was a key factor
in children’s developing memory abilities.
For example, maternal elaborativeness
might be expected to lead to more
organised and detailed memories, and
might facilitate children’s developing
understanding of time.This conversational
style also allows opportunities for mothers
and their chil- dren to agree and disagree
about the past.This negotiation could help
the child to understand that the self has a
unique perspective on the past.

Question 3

The Development of Eye-Witness Memory

Eye-witness memory: a special kind of episodic memory

Answer 3

Eye-witness memory: a special kind of episodic memory is memory for events that may not have appeared significant at the time that they were experienced.

Adults have poor memory of events as eye-witnesses so it is important to know if children are equally poor or worse at recalling events.

Its’s important to know whether the abuse really occurred, or whether ‘memories’ of abuse have been created as a result of repeated suggestive questioning by adults.

Question 4

The Accuracy of Children’s Eye-Witness Testimony

(A) The Role of Leading Questions

Answer 4

Repeated suggestive questioning created more false memories in children than adults.

Unbiased leading questions such as “Did the bicycle belong to (a) the mother, (b) the boy, or (c) the girl?” were as likely to produce false memories as biased (mis)leading questions such as “The mother owned the bike, didn’t she?”

This is an important result, as it suggests that the mechanisms that result in false memories may be general mechanisms to do with the way that the developing memory system functions, rather than specific mechanisms related to false memories of negative events.

False reports of abuse did not increase when anatomically detailed dolls were provided to enable the children to show as well as tell what had happened.

Younger children were more susceptible to leading questions than the older children. Under the influence of misleading questions about abuse, the three-year-olds tended to make errors of commission (that is, they agreed to things that had not happened) 20% of the time.

Overall, Eisen et al. did not find that memory or suggestibility differed in maladjusted children compared to typically-developing children. Abuse status was not related to the children’s eye-witness memory per- formance

In general, more accurate memory was shown by the older children, and by the more intelligent children, while less accurate memory was shown by children rated as having poor global adaptive functioning.Thus age, IQ and overall psychopathology rather than abuse status was linked to children’s eye-witness memory performance.

The eye-witness testimony of young children is in general highly accurate. However, children provide more detailed memories when the questioner has taken time to build rapport and uses open-ended questions.

Responses to misleading questions were also largely accurate. Children in both age groups were able correctly to reject misleading features most of the time, with correct denials on 60% of misleading questions for the three-year-olds after a three- week delay, and on 65% of misleading questions for the six-year-olds. Intrusions (‘remembering’ features that had not in fact occurred) were also at similar levels in the two groups after the three-week delay, being 26% for the three-year-olds and 32% for the six-year-olds. Ornstein et al. concluded that young children’s recall of a personally experienced event was surprisingly good.

Levels of suggestibility are higher in younger children the effects of misleading questions are usually to increase inaccurate acquiescence (errors of commission).

Overall, the levels of suggestibility found in different studies appear to vary with factors such as the emotional tone of the interview itself, the child’s desire to please the interviewer, characteristics of both interviewer and child, and whether the child is a participant in the action or not, among others.Almost all studies find some age differences in suggestibility. However, it is also worth noting that leading questions are more likely to result in new disclosures than neutral questions are (Gilstrap & Ceci, 2005). Hence leading questions cannot be dismissed as overall deleterious in eye-witness memory investigations with young children; indeed asking specific questions (rather than misleading questions) can aid younger children’s recall.

Question 5

Links Between the Development of Episodic Memory and the Development of Eye-Witness Memory

Answer 5

Older children can generally provide more detailed and narratively coherent memories. Ceci and Bruck also suggested that the greater susceptibility of younger children to repeated questioning by adults might be related to the distinction between scripts and personal histories.

Ceci and Bruck (1993) suggested that the over-dependency of younger children on scripted knowledge could mean that suggestions made by the experimenter get included into the children’s script for an event, and are thereafter reported as having actually taken place.

The suggestibility of younger children seems to reduce their report accuracy rather than change their memories. Because younger children sometimes agree with misleading questions, their reports contain more errors. As children get older,they seem to become less susceptible to leading questions and get better at providing narrative detail. In general, the amount of information and the accuracy of the information that children report in a memory interview increases with age, mirroring developments in episodic memory skills (Peterson, 2012).

The researchers found that the correlations between knowledge and memory were highly significant at each delay interval. From this finding, they argued that variability in knowledge in a given domain is associated with corresponding variability in recall.

Eisen et al. (2002) reported that in their study of maltreated children, overall the children with better event memories were also the children who provided more detail in their reports of abuse experiences. Girls also tended to provide more detailed disclosures than boys.This gender difference could reflect the role of verbal ability in constructing coherent narratives of one’s personal history.We also saw in the autobiographical memory section of this chapter that females tend to have earlier memories than males.

Question 6

The Development of Stratergies for Remembering

Answer 6

strategies that we develop to organize and store information to facilitate its recall later on (i.e., rehearsal)

memory development includes stratergies and capacity (memory span)

Regarding memory strategies, younger children are typically surprisingly confident about their mnemonic abilities.They do not seem to expect that they will need to use mnemonic strategies to improve their recall. Errors on memory tasks doesn’t shake their confidence in being able to do it without remembering stratergies.

most children used a variety of strategies to help them to remember which cup was the dog- house.They looked at and touched the cup hiding the dog significantly more often than the other cups, they looked at the target cup and nodded to themselves “yes”, looked at the other cups and shook their heads “no”, they rested their hand on the target cup, and so on. Wellman et al. also found that recall for the dog’s location was more successful in the children who used these strategies than in the children who didn’t.

The children were told that Big Bird was going to hide, and that they should remember where he was hiding as they would need to find him later when the bell rang.A timer was then set for four minutes, during which time the child took part in a number of distraction activities with other toys, organised by the experimenter.The children frequently checked on Big Bird’s hiding location during this distraction period, for example pointing at the pillow, saying “Big Bird!”, and peeping underneath it. In a control condition in which Big Bird was put on top of the pillow, similar strategies were not observed. DeLoache et al. argued that this showed that the children’s self-reminding behaviours were indeed strategic, as they were adopted as a function of the memory demands of the task.

Question 7

Evidence for the Strategic use of Organisation by Semantic Category

Answer 7

Organisational mnemonic strategies, such as sorting required grocery items into related groups and using this clustering to aid recall, show a similar developmental pattern to rehearsal. Early strategic use is largely task-driven, and depends on the items to be recalled. Later strategic use is child-driven, and occurs independently of the materials to be remembered.

Schneider argued that the use of organisational strategies in younger children depended on the degree to which the items were associated. For the seven-year-olds, high associativity in itself led to the use of clustering, in a largely involuntary way. In contrast, the ten-year-olds used clustering as a deliberate strategy.The older children were apparently becoming aware of the value of organisational strategies as a mnemonic.

However, when the experimenters asked the children how they went about remembering their classmates’ names, the children were unable to outline particular strategies, suggesting that their use of clustering was involuntary.

They found that recall in this strategic condition was equiva- lent to recall in the free condition, when no instructions were given. Bjorklund and Bjorklund concluded that semantic associations between highly associated items can be activated with little effort, resulting in retrieval that appears to be organised and strategic when in fact it is simply a byproduct of high associativity. High associativity thus automatically guides the structure of recall.

Question 8

The Development of Multiple Stratergies

Answer 8

Research has also investigated whether young children use more than one strategy for remembering at a time,and whether the use of multiple strategies can benefit children’s recall.

In general, such research finds that children who use more strategies do seem to recall more information.

Reported that even the youngest children used more than one strategy for remembering. Older children used more strategies overall than younger children. The number of strategies used across tasks was significantly but modestly correlated, for younger and for older children. . Finally, strategy use was strongly correlated with successful recall. Memory capacity was also measured in this study (using span tasks), and memory capacity did not predict successful recall. DeMarie and Ferron concluded that strategy use by young children was an important factor in memory development.

Schneider et al. reported that both strategy use and memory capacity increased over time. Strategy use was related to better recall, and children who used more strategies did particularly well.

They concluded that memory development is characterised by a rapid transition from non-strategic to strategic behaviour for most children. Memory development does not consist of a gradual increase in strategy use. Children who were consistently strategic used strategies in more than one test of memory, and the advantages of multiple strategy use were already evident in kindergarten children.

Question 9

The Novice–Expert Distinction

Answer 9

• The other traditional answers to the question of ‘what is memory development the development of?’ are knowledge and metamemory.
• Knowledge can also be conceptualised as expertise. It is now widely accepted that the knowledge base itself plays an important role in memory efficiency, and that experts organise their knowledge in different ways to novices.The level of prior knowledge has a critical impact on both the encoding and the storage of incoming information. Expertise also affects the efficiency of recall.
• One of the most interesting approaches to studying the influence of prior know- ledge on cognitive development has been to contrast the performance of novices in a domain, who have little prior knowledge, with that of experts, who have a lot of prior knowledge.As such comparisons are usually confounded with age (novices are usually younger than experts), the most developmentally informative contrasts are those in which the experts are younger than the novices. Such contrasts are usu- ally only possible in quite circumscribed domains, for example chess playing, soccer playing and expertise in physics.
• As Brown and DeLoache (1978) once called young children ‘universal novices’, it may come as a surprise to find that young children occasionally display more expertise in circumscribed domains than older children and adults.This can occur because experts and novices in a particular domain are distinguished by differences in experience as well as by differences in age. If you are motivated enough, it is pos- sible to gain a lot of experience in a domain at a relatively young age.
• Domain so interesting that they become veritable experts in dinosaur classification or chess and can hold more expertise than adults.
• Chi (1978)
o Examined the factors that distinguished the mem- ories of chess experts and chess novices. Her group of experts were children aged from six to ten years, and her group of novices were graduate students who could all play chess. Chi measured the memory of both groups for ‘middle game’ chess positions, which involved on average 22 chess pieces.The chess players were allowed to study the chess board for ten seconds, and were then expected to recreate the middle game position from memory. Chi found that the children positioned 9.3 chess pieces accurately on the first trial, compared to 5.9 chess pieces for the adults. She then measured how long it took both groups to learn the entire middle game position.The children took on average 5.6 trials, and the adults 8.4 trials. Expert versus novice performance was significantly different in each case.
o In a replication of Chi’s study which included additional control tasks (Schneider, Gruber, Gold & Opwis, 1993b; see Figure 8.6). Schneider et al. found that recall for random as well as meaningful chess positions was better in experts than in novices. In the control task, in which the position of geometrically shaped wooden pieces had to be reconstructed on a board that did not resemble a chess board, the effect of expertise was eliminated.These findings suggest that expertise involves both qualita- tive differences in the way that knowledge is represented and quantitative differences in the amount of knowledge available.The latter would in this case include know- ledge about the geometrical pattern of the chess board and the form and colour of chess pieces.
o The data on children’s dinosaur expertise also suggests that experts structure their knowledge in qualitatively different ways from novices. Chi, Hutchinson and Robin (1988) found that experts organised their knowledge about dinosaurs in more integrated and locally coherent ways than novices. Their knowledge was more coherent at a global level, representing superordinate information such as ‘meat eater’ versus ‘plant eater’, and also at a sub-structural level, representing infor- mation about shared attributes such as ‘has sharp teeth’ or ‘has a duckbill’.
o Chi and her colleagues pointed out that it was easier to understand the attributes of a dinosaur (sharp teeth, webbed feet, etc.) if one knew how they were related in a causal or correlated structure. The importance of causal relations and relational mappings for conceptual development and knowledge acquisition should already be familiar from previous chapters.
o Expertise may also be more important for memory performance than general cognitive ability, at least when a particular domain like chess or soccer is the object of study. expertise was a stronger predictor of performance than general cognitive ability, regardless of age or IQ.
o ‘practice makes perfect’ does capture something important about the development of expertise.
o Overall, studies of novices and experts show that expertise plays a crucial role in the organisation of memory.The idea that knowledge enrichment leads to the reorganisation of memory has some obvious parallels with Fekete’s (2010) metaphor about wine tasting by novices versus connoisseurs. Fekete argued that via repeated learning experiences, or acquired expertise, the represen- tation of the environment in the brain is irrevocably transformed, so that the connoisseur finds intricacies of flavour that are not available to the novice, even though they are tasting the same wine.
• Anyone can become an expert in certain domains if they are motivated enough to learn about them. For the brain, learning and memory are two sides of the same coin. Memory development thus depends on the depth of the knowledge base as well as on the use of explicit strategies such as rehearsal. High levels of expertise can even compensate for low levels of general intelligence in some memory tasks, such as recall tasks. The storage components of memory thus play a clear role in individual differences. It was argued that these developmental changes in epi- sodic memory may in turn explain some of the developments seen in other memory systems, such as the decrease in suggestibility found in eye-witness memory and the decline in ‘infantile amnesia’.

Question 10

other

Answer 10

language helps in rehearsing one’s own experiences or in recounting them to someone else, and these verbal narratives help to order memories temporally and establish them more firmly.

Abstract knowledge structures such as scripts for describing the temporal and causal sequences of events depend in part on language development, but language is not our only symbolic system. Words stand for or represent concepts and events in the everyday world, and of course we use them
as symbols to encode our experiences. However, we also use other symbols to encode and communicate our experiences, such as pictorial ones. These symbols also represent or stand for objects or events, and include drawings, photographs and sculptures. All of these symbols bring to mind something other than themselves. Children, too, use a number of symbolic systems in addition to language, for example in communication.Young children make gestures, they point to things and they engage in symbolic (pretend) play. They also use culturally determined symbols.These include symbols such as maps and models.The use of many of these forms of symbolic coding enables children to represent information in memory in a form that will be accessible later on.

What is receptive and expressive language?
Receptive language refers to how your child understands language. Expressive language refers to how your child uses words to express himself/herself.

As originally demonstrated by Bartlett (1932), children and adults construct memories, and the process of construction depends on prior knowledge and personal interpretation. It also depends on how much sense the mem- oriser can make of the temporal structure of their experiences.Very young children, for example, may not structure their experience in memorable ways, particularly if they do not understand particular experiences (e.g., being born, someone dying, being sexually abused), or if they do not have a clear tem-
poral framework.Very young children are also still acquiring language,and language itself is important for memory. For example, language helps in rehearsing one’s own experiences or in recounting them to someone else, and these verbal narratives help to order memories temporally and establish them more firmly.As with the devel- opment of theory of mind, the development of memory clearly cannot be isolated from the development of other cognitive processes. Remembering is embedded in larger social and cognitive activities.Thus the knowledge structures and learning skills that young children bring to their experiences are likely to be a critical factor in explaining memory development.

Question 11

other

Answer 11

language helps in rehearsing one’s own experiences or in recounting them to someone else, and these verbal narratives help to order memories temporally and establish them more firmly.

Abstract knowledge structures such as scripts for describing the temporal and causal sequences of events depend in part on language development, but language is not our only symbolic system. Words stand for or represent concepts and events in the everyday world, and of course we use them
as symbols to encode our experiences. However, we also use other symbols to encode and communicate our experiences, such as pictorial ones. These symbols also represent or stand for objects or events, and include drawings, photographs and sculptures. All of these symbols bring to mind something other than themselves. Children, too, use a number of symbolic systems in addition to language, for example in communication. Young children make gestures, they point to things and they engage in symbolic (pretend) play. They also use culturally determined symbols.These include symbols such as maps and models. The use of many of these forms of symbolic coding enables children to represent information in memory in a form that will be accessible later on.

What is receptive and expressive language?
Receptive language refers to how your child understands language. Expressive language refers to how your child uses words to express himself/herself.

As originally demonstrated by Bartlett (1932), children and adults construct memories, and the process of construction depends on prior knowledge and personal interpretation. It also depends on how much sense the memoriser can make of the temporal structure of their experiences. Very young children, for example, may not structure their experience in memorable ways, particularly if they do not understand particular experiences (e.g., being born, someone dying, being sexually abused), or if they do not have a clear temporal framework. Very young children are also still acquiring language, and language itself is important for memory. For example, language helps in rehearsing one’s own experiences or in recounting them to someone else, and these verbal narratives help to order memories temporally and establish them more firmly. As with the development of theory of mind, the development of memory clearly cannot be isolated from the development of other cognitive processes. Remembering is embedded in larger social and cognitive activities. Thus the knowledge structures and learning skills that young children bring to their experiences are likely to be a critical factor in explaining memory development.

Question 12

Conducting Successful Memory Interviews with Children

Zajac & Brown, 2017

Answer 12

To conduct successful formal interviews with children the interviewer must consider the child’s developmental capacities and vulnerabilities, set aside expectations from everyday conversations with children, consider what questions are asked and how they are asked which influence children’s responses (amount and quality).

To achieve this, it requires constant evaluation, self-reflection, and professional development.

A myriad of factors influence whether they provide information, how much and its accuracy:
1. Context (in which they’re questioned)
2. Topic (of the questions)
3. Child (developmental factors)
4. Questions (what and how the questions
are asked)

Question 13

context

Answer 13

Formality: the location, clothing, attempts of rapport and the language the interviewer uses influence how children respond and how they perceive the interviewer.

Children are socialized from a very young age that adults are knowledgeable in conversations, to rely on adults to direct the conversation, reinforce their responses and engrain them with the severity of the situation when talking to professionals.

(A) The child’s unique role as an informant

In contrast, to everyday conversations the child is now the person with the expertise and knowledge about an event, a role reversal, which leads to two main problems:

Fail to recognize that the interviewer doesn’t have the same knowledge that they do and therefore what “kind” of information they need to understand their experience. They also tend to provide brief accurate summaries of events rather than going into detail because this have what they’ve been taught is socially conventional. They may be reluctant to correct an interviewer when they are wrong due to previous expectations that adults are more knowledgeable than them.

Used to their interactions with adults being taught and then tested. They are used to adult directed conversations with positive reinforcement when they answer a question directly. This may be reflected in their tendency to not respond to a difficult question with IDK or I don’t remember (especially when questions are phrased in a yes or no format) which are ways we can see the boundaries of their memory and ensure we do not elicit an inaccurate account.

Solution:
Is to set out ground rules before questioning begins.

For them to be effective they need to be practiced and reinforced (i.e., ask them difficult/unanswerable questions on an unrelated topic to see if they say IDK or reminding them on the ground rules throughout the interview and reinforce them when they say IDK).

(B) Misgivings and Misunderstandings about
procedure

Children can be uncomfortable with the manner in which they are asked questions in a formal setting.

Frustrated with being interviewed or being asked the same questions over and over again.

May not understand legal proceedings or hold misconceptions (i.e., that being interviewed means they’re in trouble, that they cannot say IDK or disagree with the interviewer).

Solution: always assume children are naïve to legal proceedings and the reason for the interview.

(C) High Stakes:

Children may be aware about the severity of the interview and understand that their answers have consequences which may influence their willingness to answer questions. For various reasons:
o Fear of retribution
o Involves loved ones
o Feelings of complicity, embarrassment or
shame
o Fear they will not be believed
o Worries about family disruption.

Question 14

2. Topic

The subject of the event children need to describe can influence what they recall in various ways.

Answer 14

(A) Knowledge

Events they understand are better encoded, organised and later recalled.

When events are unfamiliar or not well understood children can pull out pieces of information from the event which are familiar and replace the gaps with “knowledge” from past events, experiences or stereotypes.

(B) Salience

They salience of information about an event for children will be different to what is considered important or interesting for adults.

Salient information is subjective to the child and easier to recall later.

(C) Stress

Memory processes influence all types of memory equally (stressful or not; salient or not), they all suffer memory decay or recall issues.

Do not presume which events would be more stressful or distressing for a child or how this may impact their memory! Their naivety will lessen the salience of stressful events they do not understand.

Conversely, do not underestimate the stress experienced by children in mundane events or activities.

(D) Multiple Events

Specific details of repeated events can be harder to recall because children develop scripts (what typically happens in a category of events) which makes it harder to differentiate similarities and differences between specific events.

Solution:
Begin line of questioning broadly about scripts to generate information and spread activation.

Then ask them to choose a specific instance which they recall very well and get them to discuss that event with you.

Then ask about the differences and similarities between that event and what usually happens (script).

(E) Delay

Time between event and interview can reduce the accuracy of information recalled.

In forensic settings children may be asked to recall smaller events which lead up to the main event months or years prior.

Delays: reduce the amount and quality of information recalled (especially without retrieval cues) and the more likely their accounts will be biased by external cues (other people’s input etc.) or internal cues (imagining what might have happened).

Delays provide time for children to worry about the upcoming interview which will influence their willingness to talk and share information with the interviewer.

Question 15

Child

Answer 15

Age
Most reliable indicator interviewers have on what type of questions children can answer.

The developmental stage of the child influences the quality and quantity of information they can recall.

Younger children recall fewer items of lower quality than older children. However, older children can make more memory errors because they can use their superior knowledge to fill in gaps of their memory with other information.

These are general guides which do not tell us about the specific skills or abilities of a child. Developmental skills within and between age groups is highly variable.

It is impossible to answer questions like “at what age can children…” because the answer is “it depends on…”.

Age allows us to collate the number of influences which impact on the information children can recall and how this can vary across contexts; not their ability to recall information.

Not children in contact with forensic services will differ importantly from typically developing children! Delayed relative to normal children but when matched on intelligence and asked age appropriate questions can provide similar information to their typically developing peers

(B) Memory Ability

Memory is NOT a recording device:

Recording (encoding) of events is good but not perfect.

Information which is encoded is influenced by individuals motivations, expectations and biases at the time of encoding.

It depends on how events are perceived and interpreted.

Not all information is encoded into memory and what does varies in strength.

Influenced by stress, attention, emotion, perceived importance, knowledge, goals, expectations and amount of cognitive resources available.

Memory is NOT a playback of events:

Memory is reconstructed and influenced by internal and external factors and the time of recall.

We piece together information and fill in the gaps.

Influenced by the strength of the encoded information, spreading of activation, retrieval cues and strategies’ used and the cognitive resources left over influences the amount and quality of information recalled.

Three factors which make children prone to memory errors:
o Limited understanding of the events they experience influences what is encoded and later recalled. It makes them prone to misinterpretations of events and magical thinking (blaming events on their own thoughts or actions).
o Children are less likely to use effective retrieval strategies’. Which strategy is used, how efficiently it is used influence how much and what is recalled. These develop with experience and become automatic overtime. Thus, younger children can use the same retrieval strategy as older children but still recall less information. Practice (age) also makes them less reliant on interviewers for retrieval cues and reduce chances of contamination.
o Source memory errors: where children struggle to recall where their information came from. They mix up sources and recall information from other sources then their own experience and incorporate it into their recalled memory.

Question 16

Ability to Communicate

• Coherency and clarity of their report relies on their language and communicative abilities.

Answer 16

Vocabulary
Younge children have a limited vocabulary compared to older children.

Adults overestimate their ability to understand questions (word choice, structure and complexity) which can lead to misunderstandings.

Children may use words they frequently hear but do not know the meaning of.

Legal jargon is confusing and often misunderstood.

Children interpret things in a concrete and restricted manner (literal; i.e., biting is not considered a touch).

Children vocabulary will be very idiosyncratic; built on their own unique experiences and not privy to the interviewer.

(B) Coherence
How well children can pull information together into an account (ability to tell a story).

Coherency is a better predictor of how adults interpret the credibility of a child’s account relative to other predictors such as accuracy, age or intelligence.

More coherent accounts are easier to recall later on.

Coherency is influenced by how the information is retrieved.

(C) Abstract Concepts
Specific information that interviewers need is unlikely to be spontaneously elicited by the child; even if directly asked by the interviewer.

Harder for children to understand and express due to how many dimensions it entails and a lack of experience with providing such information.

Language issues arise when words that have not yet been modelled to the child are used or explained.

(D) Understanding of their Own and Others Knowledge
Increases the amount of information reported by children as they age could reflect an increase in their narrative skills.

Meta-linguistic competency where they are able to understand what they know and the interviewer knows to figure out what information is important to include, monitor their responses to figure out if they are following along or more information is needed.

Younger children do not have this skill so will leave important information out of their account.

Question 17

4. Questions

Answer 17

Establishing Rapport
Children are less likely to share information with strangers so building rapport and maintaining it is crucial.

Not only for the current interview (quality and quantity of answers) and future interviews as well.

Three purposes of building rapport:
o Provide insightful information about the
child to the interviewer (i.e., cognitive and
language skills to shape the line of
questioning).
o Gives children practice on answering
open-ended, elaborative questions about
positive or neutral events leading to better
performance latter on.
o Providing supportive interviewing context
to reduce vulnerability and encourage
accurate reporting.

Steps:
o Basic introductions
o Talk about a topic the child finds
interesting and allowing them to be the
expert.
o Conveying ignorance to show that the
child has information that the adult doesn’t.

Types of rapport questions asked matters. Questions need to place minimal restriction on the child’s answers (open-ended) and encourage elaboration.

(B) Question Format
How we ask is what we get.

Do not want to shape the answer we get (no contamination). Impacts the quality of information obtained now and at a later date because contamination cannot always be corrected!

The greatest challenge: is eliciting information from the child without contaminating what you get. Most of the factors which increase a child’s responding end up reduce the accuracy of the information obtained.

As questions become more specific the task of the child shifts from being about providing free recall of an event to providing a specific piece of information (adult directed and more error prone).

Some questions may not get a response and repeating the question will only increase the chance of the child providing inaccurate information (conforming and providing the answer you imply and expect).

Specific words:
o definite words bias responding relative to
indefinite (did you see the monkey or did
you see a monkey).
o Smash vs hit (adults rated the estimate of
damage to be higher when the word
smash is used).
o Height is rated higher when you ask how
tall the man is relative to how short the
man is.
• You cannot just disregard the answer to a
poorly worded question because it will
influence the rest of the interview.
• Biasing child responses is not deliberate
they are unintentionally done by the
interviewer and are why being aware of all (4) influences on children’s memory and the potential contamination you bring to their recollection of events and reflection on one’s own practice is crucial.

(C) Question Complexity
Grammatical complexity can bias children’s responses by impairing their understanding of the question and their reliance on filling in the blanks and answering the question they think you meant and not what was really asked.

Questions should be simple and avoid:
o Unnecessary negatives (did you not see
him)
o Multiple parts or double barrelled
questions (did you go to the school and
then the shops; the answer to one part may
not match the second!)
o Ambiguity (did he like it)
o Embedded clauses (is that the lady you
saw when you went to town)
o Questions which indirectly request
information (do you remember what you
were doing; confuses children because
they technically require a yes/no answer)
• Practitioners need to be aware of how the
question is asked:
o Jumping from topic to topic can waste
cognitive effort of the child to keep up so
sign posting (we will switch topic now) and
providing a summary of the information
covered is a good solution.

(D) Non-Verbal Cues
Facial expressions, tone, body language, repetition of questions, gestures, encouraging answers that fit with your own expectations can bias responses.

Note: no method of interviewing will grantee a response or that the response obtained is sufficiently detailed, organised, accurate and meets the need of the interviewer. Therefore, practitioners need to consider how the questions are asked and how they interpret the response.

Question 18

How to Interpret Responses

Answer 18

Interpreting Non-Responsiveness
• Non-responsiveness can reflect not knowing the answer, not understanding the question, there is no more information to give (repeating question will not help and will only bias responding), a memory exists but cannot be retrieved (practitioner needs to help guide retrieval without biasing it; encourage elaboration), reluctance to share information (build more rapport with child), unresponsive to broad open-ended questions (start with more focused questioning and then expand into more broad elaborative questions to allow them to understand the topic of the questioning and what information is important).

(B) Evaluating Responses
Broad open-ended questions are the gold standard of interviewing but do not always provide accurate information.

When listening to children’s responses always consider what alternatives to their accounts are plausible (misinterpretations that may have occurred).

Reflect on how your line of questioning or behaviour may have contaminated (suggestibility, repeated questions, open or closed) the response and what contamination prior to the interview (school/family/police) may have occurred.

Challenges:
o Inclusion of clearly fabricated or inaccurate
information may not mean that the whole
account is wrong.
o Details which appear highly plausible can
be implausible and hard to differentiate
from the truth. Details which sound highly
implausible can be plausible.
o The child’s demeanour when talking about
sensitive issues is NOT a good indicator of
the truthfulness of the account. People can
be monotone when talking about stressful
events.
o There is no one test to identify if a child is
being truthful or accurate and practice does
not make perfect.

(C) Remembering the Interview
Contamination can occur after the interview has been conducted. Interviewers can make errors when recalling interview, going over notes and making a recommendation.

Is prone to memory error and leaves out what factors prompted a response from the child.

(D) Maintaining Good Interviewing Practice
It’s not a skill that improves with practice.

Requires objective review of own interviewing practices, to conduct better quality interviews.

It requires constant evaluation, self-reflection and professional development- it requires us to set aside our expectations of interacting with children in everyday settings, reverse the roles, and talk to them through a different lens.

Following the (4) factor model provided will lead to better quality interviews and a better chances of response, more detailed, longer and accurate account (though not garunteed).

Question 19

Can Children be Useful Witnesses? It Depends on How they are Questioned
Brown & Lamb (2015)

Answer 19

Abstract:
They way adults question children about their autobiographic memories has a profound impact on what information they recall (the amount and quality).

Looking at both how the types of questions asked influences both accurate and false recall of events from children’s memory provide us with complementary evidence on how to design optimal conditions for child interviews to elicit accurate responding (organised, coherent and accurate).

Designed a flexible interviewing protocol that should be adopted worldwide that is evidence-based and provides developmentally appropriate interviewing protocol.

The Impact of Interview Questions on Child Responses:
Lab-based and field research provide converging evidence on age related trends in children’s response to question formats on their event memory recall.

Older children provide more information and more accurate information than younger children (especially in free recall) but accuracy in reporting does tend to remain relatively stable across development in response to open-ended questions.

Question type influences the amount, accuracy, and organisation of information recalled:
o Broad open-ended questions:
 “Tell me everything you know about that”
 Encourages children to elaborate on their
previous responses (tell me more about
that), Improves accuracy, Produces more
forensically relevant information with fewer
inconsistencies relative to close-ended
questions.
 Children provide more coherent and
organised responses.
o Focused open-ended prompts (cued recall):
 Questions about specific details (i.e., when
did this happen)
 Produce fewer details, more errors,
inconsistencies than broader open-ended
prompts.
o Closed prompts:
 Yes/no or multiple choice.
 Produce fewer detailed responses, more
errors and inconsistencies than any form of
open-ended prompts.

Developmental Differences in Responses to Interview Questions:

As children age they respond better to open-ended recall questions.

3-4 year old children respond better to focused open-ended question than to broad open-ended questions. This is because they do not provide sufficient structure for younger children to learn how to answer the question and decide what information is relevant about the event to report. The “wh-” in the question also provides better retrieval cues/strategies’ for children to use and signal what category of information is relevant.

5+ children tend to respond better to broad open-ended questions relative to focused open-ended questions; but the gap between responses on the two different formats becomes increasingly smaller as they age.

Developmental delays mean that atypical children require more structure from focused open-ended questions for longer than typically developing children.

Mild and Moderately cognitive delayed children preform/responded the same as matched typically developing children (open-ended questions).

Severe cognitive delayed children preformed worse than typically developing children.

Other Influences on Children’s Reporting
• Interviewer bring biases into the interview
when they have information about the
allegation made prior to speaking with the
child and influences what types of questions
they ask and children’s opportunity to
respond to questions freely and provide
alternative interpretations (i.e., confirmation
bias).
• Non-Verbal cues: encouragement, gestures,
tone, facial expressions impact child’s
responding.
• Repetition of questions imply what answer
the child should give and pressures them to
conform and are more likely to report false
information (suggestively).
• Suggestively via misinformation prior to
(parents, social services, schools), during or
post interview (impact long term memories
and responding on further interviews).

Question 20

Applications to Clinical Practice

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) structured child interview protocol

3 phases

Answer 20

Applications to Clinical Practice
• Practitioners fail to incorporate research on
optimal interviewing strategies’ into clinical
practice.
• We designed the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development (NICHD)
structured child interview protocol which is
an evidence-based, flexible and
developmentally appropriate child interview
strategy.

Three main phases:
o Pre-substantive Phase:
 Build rapport with child asking them to talk
about something they are interested in that
they do in their daily lives.
 Introduce the ground rules (say IDK do not
guess, correct mistakes, tell me if you do
not understand the question etc.)
 Practice recalling normal daily events in
free recall period and encourage
elaboration.

o Substantive Phase:
 Ask them what the interview topic is? Why
did they come to talk today.
 As progressively more specific questions if
children, at first, struggle to answer open-
ended questions. These have been
designed to be minimally misleading ad
are admissible in court.
 This phase is flexible but emphasises the
use of open-ended questions to obtain the
most information about an event.
 Its most distinctive characteristic is its
advise to use children’s previous
responses to guide future questions (cued
invitations) which result in child-directed
rather than interviewer-directed retrieval
processes.
 When using focused open-ended question,
interviewers are trained to return to broad
open-ended questions immediately after
clarifying any confusion or the child begins
to open up and share more information
(pairing)
 In events which have occurred over
multiple occasions interviewers are
advised to ask them about the most recent
incident first, then the first incident, and
then their most well-remembered incident
before the interviewer asks about a neutral
event.

o Third Phase:
 Children talk about a neutral topic and are
instructed on how to contact the
interviewer if they have any other
information that comes to mind after the
interview that they would like to share.

• Using the NCIHD protocol:
o Children provide more in response to
open-ended questions.
o Interviewers asked more open-ended
questions and reduced their use of closed
prompts.
o Increased children’s opportunities and
responses to open-ended questions which
increased the quality of the information
obtained and minimised the amount of
errors made.
o Cued invitations helped children elaborate
on their earlier responses.
o Pairing opened-ended questions with
more focused questions improved
interviewing quality.
o Children grasped temporal concepts
better.
o Validated in various populations: younger
children, eye witnesses, intellectual
disability children etc.
o Increased the number of suspects charged
and found guilty of sexual abuse.
o Even with the NCIDH protocol some
children are still reluctant to talk about
such events and a revised model was
made to increase abused children’s
willingness to share information with an
interviewer.

Question 21

Listen up! Speech is for thinking during infancy

Vouloumanos & Waxman (2014)

Answer 21

Abstract:
• Infants’ exposure to human speech within
the first year promotes more than speech
processing and language acquisition: new
developmental evidence suggests that
listening to speech shapes infants’
fundamental cognitive and social
capacities.
• Speech streamlines infants’ learning,
promotes the formation of object
categories, signals communicative
partners, highlights information in social
interactions, and offers insight into the
minds of others.
• These results, which challenge the claim
that for infants, speech offers no special
cognitive advantages.

Speech is not just for language (even for infants)
• Infant speech perception was considered
primarily a foundation upon which to build
language. Speech perception is viewed as
the building blocks for the acquisition of
phonology, syntax, and meaning.
• However, speech perception has benefits
beyond language acquisition. For example,
from the first months of life, listening to
speech is a powerful engine: it promotes
the acquisition of fundamental
psychological processes, including pattern
learning, the formation of object categories,
the identification of communicative
partners, knowledge acquisition within
social interactions, and the development of
social cognition.

Human speech is a privileged signal from birth
• From birth, speech is a privileged signal for
humans.
• New-borns prefer the vocalizations of
humans and nonhuman primates to other
sounds.
• By 3 months, they tune in specifically to
human speech even favouring human
speech over other human vocalizations,
including emotional (e.g., laughing) and
physiological (e.g., sneezing) vocalizations.
• Interestingly, 3-month-olds’ preference for
speech is broad enough to include native
as well as non-native speech sounds. This
suggests that infants privilege the speech
signal itself – and not simply the familiar
sounds of their own native language.
• These behavioral preferences converge
with neural evidence. In infants’ first month,
human speech and rhesus calls activate
similar neural areas, but by 3 months
speech and rhesus calls elicit distinctly
different neural responses. The
developmental change in patterns of
activation likely reflects neural
specialization. Specifically, 1-month-olds’
response to human speech is already
localized to the left hemisphere; over the
next few months, the left hemisphere
maintains its activation to speech, but
becomes less responsive to non-speech
sounds. This developmental pattern
suggests that from birth, listening to
speech sounds preferentially activates
specific areas of the temporal cortex, and
that a pruning process underlies further
neural specialization for speech in the left
hemisphere. Infants’ preference for
listening to human speech shapes how
they learn

Listening to speech facilitates learning and pattern extraction
• Speech is a privileged unit for even the
most basic forms of learning. From birth,
when infants listen to speech, they
successfully recognize individual units and
their relative positions in the speech
sequence. And at 1 month, infants who are
conditioned to speech show a stronger
response and a steeper learning curve than
infants conditioned to either tones or
backward speech.
• By 7 months, speech promotes more
sophisticated forms of learning, including
the detection of rules and patterns. After
hearing only 2 min of patterned speech
syllable sequences (ABB: la-ga-ga, da-li-li),
7-month-olds extract and generalize rules
such as identity and sequential positioning
and distinguish ABB (la-ga-ga) from ABA
(la-ga-la). But after 2 min of exposure to
patterned non-speech sounds (musical
tones, animal sounds, timbres), infants do
not extract the equivalent ABB or ABA
rules. Within the auditory domain, infants
can generalize rules to nonspeech sounds
only if they first hear those rules
instantiated in speech. This asymmetry,
favoring infants’ ability to extract patterns in
speech over non-speech sounds, suggests
that infants learn better with speech.

Listening to speech promotes categorization
• Infants’ early preference for speech is
powerful. But preferences cannot tell us
whether (or when) infants begin to link
speech to the objects and events around
them.
• object categorization – a building block of
cognition
• 3 to 12 month old infants viewed several
images from one object category (e.g.,
dinosaurs), each accompanied by either a
segment of speech or a sequence of sine-
wave tones. Next, infants viewed two test
images, one from the now-familiar category
(a new dinosaur) and one from a novel
category (e.g., a fish). If infants formed the
object category (here, dinosaurs), they
should distinguish between the test
images. By 3 months infants listening to
speech successfully formed categories;
those listening to tones failed to form
object categories at any age.
• Thus, infants are tuned not only to speech
but also to a principled and surprisingly
early link between speech and the
fundamental cognitive process of
categorization.
• By 6 months, the link to categorization has
become tuned specifically to human
vocalizations. This documents a
surprisingly early link between human
language and core cognitive processes,
including object categorization that cannot
be attributed to familiarity. Although 3- and
4-month-olds have considerable exposure
to speech and none to lemur vocalizations,
both signals confer the same cognitive
advantage for categorization.

Speech helps identify potential communicative partners
• To convey meaning, human communicative
partners must integrate, encode, and
decode linguistic symbols instantiated in
speech, paralinguistic cues (such as vocal
pitch or intonation), and gestures (Box 2).
The speech signal itself can help identify a
potential communicative partner.
• In their first months infants treat people
and objects as different kinds of entities:
they respond differently to people (with
more smiling and emotional sounds) and
objects (with more grasping). At 6 months
they also expect others to also treat people
and objects differently [20]. By 5 months,
infants use human speech to identify
potential conversational partners. When
presented with human and monkey faces,
5-month-olds match speech (native or non-
native) to human faces and monkey calls to
monkey faces, but they do not match other
human emotional vocalizations (e.g.,
laughter) specifically to humans.
• Infants may thus already expect that
humans, but not other animals, are the
source of speech (Box 3). This expectation
for human speech (but not emotional
vocalizations) suggests that infants are
guided by more than their familiarity with
the sounds alone. By 6 months, infants are
especially attentive to communicative cues
including eye gaze and speech produced
by their pedagogical partners and use
these cues to guide learning.

Speech indexes the transfer of information
• When listening to a conversation in a
foreign language, even if we cannot
understand the meaning of a single word,
we nonetheless infer that information is
being conveyed. Thus, for adults,
understanding the communicative function
of speech does not require understanding
the contents of the speech. Infants show a
similar understanding. By 6 months,
although infants understand only very few
words [24], they are already sensitive to the
communicative function of speech and
appreciate that speech is a powerful
conduit through which people share
information. When an actor can no longer
reach a target object, infants at 6 and 12
months infer that she can still obtain that
target object from a second actor by using
speech but not coughing and other non-
speech vocalizations
• Inferring that speech allows people to
transfer information may allow infants to
more easily deduce the focus of a person’s
attention, and to make inferences about
what information people intend to share.
• This early understanding of the
communicative function of speech may
provide a mechanism for acquiring
language and knowledge about the world.
• Speech is a conduit for moving information
between people and a cue that information
is being shared.

Speech gives insight into others’ minds
• Understanding the goals and intentions of
others is one of the most complex
problems infants face. How do infants
come to gain insight into the minds of
others? The foundations of social cognition
begin to take shape in the first year of life.
By the end of their first year, infants
appreciate that people (and other agents)
have intentions and they distinguish
between agents who can behave
intentionally and non-agents, who cannot.
• Infants appreciate that speech (but not
nonspeech) permits us to share our internal
mental states, desires, and beliefs. Speech
is a powerful vehicle for communicating our
intentions and understanding the intentions
of others.
• At this age, infants also begin to forge
more precise expectations about the
functions of human language. They
discover that different kinds of words refer
to objects, events, and categories. This
more precise set of expectations permits
infants to make more precise inferences
about speakers’ intentions.
• The advantage that speech has on
categorization in 3- to 6-month-olds
becomes far more precise: by 12 months,
infants expect words that are presented in
naming phrases (‘Look at the blick’) to refer
to objects and object categories, but have
no such expectation for words presented
alone (‘Wow’) or for speech that does not
involve naming (‘Oooh’, ‘Shhh’, ‘Oh, look!’)
[37,38,57]. Moreover, they expect novel
nouns to refer to objects and object
categories but not to surface properties
(e.g., color or pattern). And by 14 months,
infants expect that novel words also refer
to actions and events.
• As infants’ expectations about the different
functions of language become more
precise, so too do the ways in which
listening to speech comes to shape
cognition.
• Individual differences in infants’
preferences for speech may even be linked
to differences in their acquisition of
fundamental social cognitive capacities.
Infants who exhibit reduced preferences for
human speech at 12 months display more
autistic-like behaviors at 18 months.
• Inasmuch as autistic traits include social
communicative deficits beyond simple
language difficulties this suggests a potent
link between simple speech biases and
complex social communicative behaviors.

Concluding remarks
• Before infants begin talking, they are
listening to speech. We have proposed that
even before infants can understand the
meaning of the speech that surrounds
them, listening to speech transforms
infants’ acquisition of core cognitive
capacities.
• This transformation is unlikely to be
explained by appealing to low-level
perceptual effects or stimulus familiarity.
• Instead, what begins as a natural
preference for listening to speech actually
provides infants with a powerful natural
mechanism for learning rapidly about the
objects, events, and people that populate
their world.
• Outstanding questions for further research
are presented in Box 4.

Question 22

Precursors to the Development of Intention at 6 Months: Understanding People and Their Actions

Legerstee, Barna and DiAdamo (2000)

Answer 22

Abstract
• Investigated whether 6-month-old infants expect people to behave differently toward persons and inanimate objects. Infants were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions.
• In the experimental conditions, infants were habituated to an actor who either talked to or reached for and swiped with something hidden behind an occluder.
• In the test events the actor was occluded, but the infants were shown either a person or an object. In the control condition, infants only saw the person or object stimulus.
• Results showed that infants who had been habituated to an actor who was talking looked longer at the object, and infants who had been habituated to an actor who was reaching and swiping looked longer at the person. No difference in looking at the stimuli was observed in the control condition.
• This suggests that infants expect people’s actions to be related to objects in ways that
are continuous with more mature, intentional understandings.

In the present study
• we corrected for the methodological problems of the Molina et al. (1996) study. In order to determine what the expectations are of 6-month-old infants when they see people act on something hidden behind an occluder, we presented them with a series of experiments in which they were familiarized with conditions in which a live actor either smiled at and talked to, or reached for and swiped at, something hidden behind a curtain. After the infants were familiarized with the stimuli, the curtains were moved. One was pulled to cover and hide the actor, and the other was pulled away to reveal the stimuli, so that the infants either saw a person alone or an inanimate object alone. Thus, unlike in social interaction studies, in which actors face infants to elicit social behavior, in the present study both the actor and the person stimulus were facing each other’s position, thereby presenting a profile to the infant during both habituation and testing. To solve this task, the infants needed to infer that the actor has a target for her or his activity when none is visible and then remember something about that target when the actor disappears and a novel person or object is presented. This task therefore assesses the infants’ cognitive rather than social interactive abilities.
• To make sure that the infants’ responsiveness was due to the habituation sequences rather than to the actual differences between the social and nonsocial stimulus, we presented the infants with a control procedure. The infants’ looking time was coded in each condition. We hypothesized that if infants expect people to communicate with persons but not with inanimate objects, then they should look longer at events that appear to violate these expectations following habituation (e.g., people speaking to objects or acting on people). Thus, in these experiments, the person and object test events were the same, and if the analysis shows a main effect, then this must be due to a preference for one stimulus over another. However, if the analysis shows an interaction of stimulus and action for the experimental conditions only, then the difference in responding to the person or the object conditions indicates that the infants had developed expectations about the different actions (speaking vs. manipulating) that they had observed during habituation.
Method
• 6-month-old infants were randomly assigned to either one of the two experimental conditions or to the control condition in a between-subjects design.
• The experiments were conducted in an assessment room at the university laboratory. Infants were taken to the room and placed either in an infant chair or on the laps of their mothers. Mothers wore headphones and listened to music. They were requested to close their eyes and not to communicate with their babies, either through vocalizations or through gestures or movements. Curtains surrounded infants and mothers on four sides.
• The camera recorded the infants’ looking behavior during the experiment. The images of the infants were presented on a large video screen, which was situated behind the curtain. A date-time generator displayed on the screen allowed an observer to time the habituation and test events. The observer was uninformed about the hypotheses of the study and could therefore not influence the study.
• In the talking condition infants were habituated to an event in which an actor was facing a curtain and said, “Hello, how are you today?” (see Figure 1A).
• The actor continued until infants’ looking time had decreased to 50% on 2 consecutive trials, compared with the infants’ first 2 trials of initial looking time, provided the first 2 trials summed to a minimum of 12 s.
• Infants were allowed a minimum of 6 trials and a maximum of 14 trials. The number of trials for all infants fell within these limits. The observer signaled silently to the actor when the habituation trial had ended. The test trials began when the actor closed one curtain to conceal herself from the infants and the observer opened the other curtain to reveal the stimulus to the infants. The observer stood behind the curtain and was therefore not visible to the infant.
• During the test trials the actor was covered, but the stimulus the actor had been talking to—either a person or an object—was visible. Each stimulus was presented separately to the infants.
• The infants received six test trials.
• The test trials began when the actor closed one curtain to conceal herself from the infants and the observer opened the other curtain to reveal the stimulus to the infants. The observer stood behind the curtain and was therefore not visible to the infant. Opening of the curtain consistently took 2 s. Thus, during the test trials the actor was covered, but the stimulus the actor had been talking to—either a person or an object—was visible. Each stimulus was presented separately to the infants. The infants received six test trials. The choice whether to present the person or object stimulus first was randomly determined, with the constraint that 50% of the infants received the person first. Subsequent order of presentation was counterbalanced. If the person stimulus was first, the second stimulus would therefore be the object, the third stimulus the person, and so forth, until six test trials had been presented consisting of three person and three object presentations. Two objects served as inanimate objects. One was a black broom with a blue handle, and the other was a black shovel with a wooden handle. The broom and shovel had a white Styrofoam ball fastened to the top of the handle (the size of a person’s head). Two different women served as social stimuli. They were similar in height to the broom and shovel, wore black shoes, blue or white slacks, and white or black tops. To make sure that the actor did not influence the infants through posture or intonation, the actor did not know which of the two stimuli hidden behind the curtains would appear on the first test trial. Choice of person or object had been determined before the experiment began and was known only to the person stimulus and the research assistant. The observer would signal (silently) to the person and the research assistant when the infant had habituated to the actions. The person stimulus would then either present herself or the object. Only one stimulus at a time was visible to the infant, but all the infants saw both over the course of the six trials. In the acting condition the above event was repeated, but rather than seeing the actor talking, the infants saw the actor facing the curtain and reaching for, and performing sweeping motions with, something hidden behind the curtain (see Figure IB). After familiarization, the curtain was opened, which took 2 s, and the infants saw either the inanimate object or the person alternatively until six trials (three for person, three for object) had been completed. Infants in the control condition were shown the six test trials without the habituation sequence. The procedure for presentation of the test trials was identical to that used in the experimental conditions. Looking data were collected from the close-up video recording of the infants’ faces by the live observer, seated behind the curtain, with the help of the date-time generator that displayed the time in 0.1 s on the screen. When the infants looked away from the stimulus for longer than 2 s, the observer seated behind the curtain closed the curtain, and another stimulus was presented to the infants. Consequently, the interval time, measured from the time the stimulus disappeared (Is curtain closed) until it was revealed (Is curtain opened) was consistently 2 s. The actor remained hidden during the test trials
• Use infant-controlled habituation paradigms, we operationally defined looking in both the habituation and the test trials as the first look at the display that was longer than 1 s; looking ended when infants looked away from the display for longer than 2 s. This definition is the same as that in habituation studies using inanimate objects

In summary,
• the finding that infants reacted differently to the person or to the inanimate object depending on which condition (i.e., reaching or talking) the infants had been habituated to indicated that the infants had formed different expectations during habituation about the relationship between actions and objects. When infants see people talk, they expect them to address persons, and when they see people reach and swipe, they expect these actions to be directed at inanimate objects. If they do not see these expected events, infants increase visual attention. Because all infants in the three conditions saw the same stimuli—a person or an object—differences in responding to the person and object displays during the test trials must be a function of the different events infants had been exposed to during the habituation trials. This differential responsiveness to the person or object could not be a function of the physical differences of the stimuli, because infants did not look longer to one or the other in the control condition

Discussion
• The purpose of the present experiments was to determine whether 6-month-old infants relate communicative acts to people and manipulatory acts to inanimate objects. Research had shown that soon after birth, infants communicate with people and act on objects.
• The findings revealed that when 6-month-olds see people talk, they expect these actions to be directed at persons and not at inanimate objects. Infants who were familiarized with the profile of an actor who appeared to talk to something hidden behind an occluder looked longer when the recipient of the actions was revealed to be an inanimate object rather than a person. In contrast, infants who had been habituated to an actor who swiped with something hidden behind an occluder looked longer when the hidden object turned out to be animate. These responses could not have been the result of the visual differences between the twostimuli, because infants did not show such differential looking during the control conditions. Instead, the infants’ differential looking pattern varied as a result of the different types of actions to which they had been habituated. The infants looked longer at the outcome that was inconsistent with their expectations than at those that were consistent with their expectations. This supports the findings by other studies using infant-controlled habituation methods to investigate infant reasoning about human behavior. It indicates that preferential looking methods can be used to assess infants’ expectations about the psychological world, just as they are used to assess infants’ expectations about the physical world, by measuring infants’ heightened looking to novel or unexpected event outcomes.

Conclusion
• In conclusion, the available evidence seems to suggest that the development of a theory of mind is a gradual process. We argue that it is a function of infants’ prior abilities to differentiate between people and objects. Before infants perceive people as intentional beings that have goals that can be achieved by different means, they must understand that people are animate beings who not only move by themselves but also behave in particular ways. When infants understand that others are animate agents, they understand that they themselves are animate agents who make things happen (Tomasello, 1999; Wellman, 1993). From birth, infants identify with other humans (Bruner, 1973; Trevarthen, 1979) and imitate their actions because very early in life, they understand other people to be like them (Karmiloff-Smith, 1992; Tomasello, 1999). By 5 months of age, infants recognize their own faces, voices, and movements as familiar and social stimuli (Legerstee, Anderson, & Schaffer, 1998). This suggests that infants are born with specified structural information that enables them to recognize members of their own species to be like them and to differentiate these from inanimate objects. The idea that very young infants recognize people to be like themselves suggests that progress in the understanding of serf leads to progress in the understanding of others (Tomasello, 1999). When infants in this study saw an actor talk to an inanimate object, the infants looked longer at the event than when they saw the actor address a person. The infants’ differential attention was caused by the prior habituation experience directed to invisible objects. These cognitive tasks require both inference and memory, and they indicate that infants are sensitive to the target of adult communications and actions. These findings suggest that infants expect the actions of people to be functionally related to objects in ways that are continuous with more mature understandings that involve intentions.

Question 23

The Exposure Advantage: Early Exposure to a Multilingual Environment Promotes Effective Communication

Fan, Liberman, Keysar and Kinzler (2015)

Answer 23

Abstract
• Early language exposure is essential to developing a formal language system, but may not be sufficient for communicating effectively.
• To understand a speaker’s intention, one must take the speaker’s perspective.
• Multilingual exposure may promote effective communication by enhancing perspective taking.
• We tested children on a task that required perspective taking to interpret a speaker’s intended meaning. Monolingual children failed to interpret the speaker’s meaning dramatically more often than both bilingual children and children who were exposed to a multilingual environment but were not bilingual themselves. Children who were merely exposed to a second language performed as well as bilingual children, despite having lower executive-function scores.
• Thus, the communicative advantages demonstrated by the bilinguals may be social in origin, and not due to enhanced executive control.
• For millennia, multilingual exposure has been the norm. Our study shows that such an environment may facilitate the development of perspective-taking tools that are critical for effective communication.

Introduction
• Throughout human history it has been the norm to be exposed to multilinguist but not the exception.
• Children in multilingual environments routinely have the opportunity to track who speaks which language, who understands which content, and who can converse with whom. This raises the intriguing possibility that early multilingual exposure may facilitate the development of social-cognitive tools that are important for effective communication.
• Though communication is critical for nearly every facet of human social life, communicating effectively is difficult. Effective communication requires complex coordination of mental states, intentions, and common knowledge (Sperber et al., 2010).

• We propose that early exposure to multiple languages could set the stage for the development of effective communication.
o Exposure to speakers of diverse languages provides children with social experiences that diverge sharply from those of monolingual children. Regardless of their own proficiency, children in multilingual environments have extensive practice in understanding other people’s linguistic perspectives.
o Language also serves as a robust cue to social group membership so monitoring other people’s language usage may provide children with information about people’s perspectives, social relationships, and communicative goals.
o Bilinguals mentally represent multiple languages and select or inhibit linguistic systems, bilingualism may confer cognitive benefits, such as the development of executive function.
o Bilingual children perform better than monolingual children on theory-of-mind tasks and mental rotation tasks, which require spatial perspective taking.
• The current study:
o In the study reported here, we investigated a heretofore unexplored advantage of being raised in a multilingual environment—an advantage that is independent from potential differences in children’s executive-function abilities and that does not depend on actually speaking more than one language.
o We evaluated the possibility that early multilingual exposure may confer unique social communicative skills, even among children who are merely exposed to multilingual environments but who are not bilingual themselves. We propose that routine exposure to people who speak different languages provides children with a formative communication environment that is fundamentally different from that experienced by monolingual children.
o Exposure to diverse sociolinguistic environments could grant children a profound understanding of differences between people’s perspectives, naturally enhancing their communicative abilities.
o Such diverse linguistic experiences may facilitate early development and expression of effective interpersonal communication.
o In other words, we suggest that the social consequences of growing up in a multilingual, rather than monolingual, environment are not necessarily due to the impact of being bilingual per se, but rather may be a result of social exposure to diverse speakers.
o To evaluate this possibility, we recruited children from monolingual and multilingual environments and compared their ability to effectively understand another person’s intended meaning in a social communication task.

Method
• 4- to 6-year-old children
• The final sample included 24 children in each of three language groups: monolingual, exposure, and bilingual.
• Children were included in the monolingual group if a parent reported that they heard and spoke only English and had little experience with other languages. Children were included in the exposure group if a parent reported that they were primarily English speakers, but had some regular but limited exposure to another language. Children were included in the bilingual group if a parent reported that they were exposed to English and another language on a regular basis and were able to speak and understand both languages.

Procedure
• To test our hypothesis, we presented the children with a social communication task that required taking an interlocutor’s perspective. Participants sat across a table from a confederate (the “director”), who asked them to move objects around a 4 × 4 grid. Four grid squares were occluded, so that only the participant, and not the director, could see their contents. The director wore black matte sunglasses throughout the task and was instructed to maintain her eye gaze toward the center of the grid when giving instructions, in order to avoid unintentionally leading the children toward the target object with her gaze.
• To ensure that the children understood the task children completed a practice trial. In this trial, an experimenter helped the children give instructions to move objects, and the director followed the instructions. Twice, the director intentionally committed egocentric errors, moving an object that was occluded from the participant’s view. After each error, the experimenter asked the participant if the object the director moved was correct and guided the participant to repeat the instruction. On the second attempt, the director moved the correct object. When the practice trial was completed, the experimenter asked the director and participant to switch locations and confirmed that the participant understood who could see which objects.
• After the practice trial, participants received a total of 12 instructions, 3 for each of four different grid setups. For each grid, one critical test instruction was ambiguous: The instruction could refer to a mutually visible target object or to a distractor object that was visible only from the child’s egocentric perspective. To succeed, participants had to take the director’s perspective and choose the mutually visible target rather than the distractor, which was hidden from the director’s view. For example, for the grid in Figure 1, the critical instruction was, “I see a small car. Can you move the small car under the spoon?” Because the director specifically said that she was talking about the car that she could see, the target of the instruction had to be the smallest car that both the child and the director could see. It could not have been the distractor, a smaller car that was occluded from the director’s view.
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• In addition to performing the social communication task, participants completed the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, which measures verbal ability; the Dimensional Change Card Sort task which measures executive function; the nonverbal visual-spatial intelligence component of the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test which measures fluid intelligence; and a second short task assessing visual perspective taking.
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Results
Vocabulary scores on the PPVT-4 were not significantly different across the group.
Accuracy on unambiguous trials was high across the board. These results suggest that the three groups had comparable proficiency in English.

To evaluate the children’s ability to take the director’s perspective in order to understand her intended meaning, we analyzed their selections on the critical trials and found a dramatic difference. Whereas the majority of children in the exposure (63%) and bilingual (58%) groups moved the target on all four critical trials, only a minority of monolingual children were able to perform at that level (21%). Children in the bilingual and exposure groups were significantly more likely than children in the monolingual group to move the target, respectively, whereas the performance of the bilingual and exposure groups did not differ.

critical trial performance: The exposure group and the bilingual group both significantly outperformed the monolingual group—exposure group. Thus, monolingual children were less able than children who were exposed to another language to interpret the director’s intended meaning. This demonstrates that early multilingual exposure enhances the development of effective interpersonal communication abilities.

In the bilingual and exposure groups, the rate of recovery was much higher than the rate of incorrect switching—bilingual group: 57% recovery vs. 9% incorrect switching; exposure group: 54% recovery vs. 9% incorrect switching; In contrast, monolinguals showed similar levels of recovery and incorrect switching (37% recovery vs. 30% incorrect switching).
o Therefore, the patterns of looking and moving suggest that the children in the bilingual and exposure groups actively took the director’s perspective but that the children in the monolingual group did not.
• Even more impressively, the bilingual and exposure groups were less egocentric from the outset: They made fewer egocentric first looks than monolingual children
• The exposure and bilingual groups both made significantly fewer egocentric first looks than the monolingual group

• Our data, show that differences in executive function cannot account for the observed differences in children’s social communication abilities
• In summary, although the bilingual group demonstrated cognitive advantages over the monolingual group, the exposure group did not. Critically, the exposure group was just as successful as the bilingual group at the social communication task, despite having lower executive-function scores. Thus, differences in cognitive abilities cannot explain our findings that both the bilingual and the exposure group outperformed the monolingual group at social perspective taking.